The Plan:
Day 1: Tuscan kale and bean soup
Day 2: Totsoi and sweet potato salad, Apple slices
Day 3: Homemade pizza
Day 4: Ginger sesame chopped salad with steak (subbing for the chicken)
Day 5: Egg scramble with turnip greens and mushrooms
Day 6: Spaghetti squash bowls with homemade pasta sauce and mozzarella
Day 7: Vegetable stir fry with broccoli, salad turnips, and rice
Pantry Shuffle:
Out of Storage:
- Homemade pasta sauce
- Steak from Mastadon Valley Farm share
Into Storage:
- Potatoes: every week I add more root vegetables to storage from my Crossroads Community Farm fall/winter CSA share and the grocery store. Store potatoes in a cool (~50 degrees), dark place, away from apples and onions. They can store about 6 months this way.
- Carrots, beets, beauty heart radish, cabbage, celeriac (celery root): These will be kept in my spare refrigerator at a temp of 35-40 degrees F. Best to put in plastic bags with air holes to keep humidity high.
Notes: Garden Review
How did your garden turn out this year? At the end of the growing season, I like to evaluate how my garden performed so I know what to do next year, and what to avoid. I keep a garden journal to record my thoughts. Here is my review for 2021.
Nature: Lots of different weather factors affecting my garden this year! We had a very late spring frost (the last few days of May), so sadly I lost a lot of my home grown seedlings. I really wanted to grow everything from seed myself this year, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Then, some of the seedlings that made it through the frost were eaten by voles and deer. We’ve put out traps since then to get the vole problem under control. Next, there was a summer drought, along with several wind storms. We even had a tornado in our town! Lastly, we had an especially warm fall and a rainy October.
What worked: Training butternut squash up a trellis actually worked quite well. Unfortunately, the wind storms snapped one of the trellis and I had to find another way to tie it up. The irrigation system I installed was priceless during the summer drought. It saved me so much time compared to watering by hand each day. My water bill was quite high though. Strawberries went bonkers. I started with three small plants, and this year they spread across an entire garden bed. They are the everbearing variety and most of my crop came August to October. I couldn’t believe that on Oct 30th I was still pulling red, sweet strawberries from the garden! My raspberries also made a comeback this year. Tomatoes that were planted in the garden produced very well, as did the bell and carmen pepper starts that were store bought. Cilantro, mint, thyme, and basil worked well in porch pots.
What didn’t work: Only one pumpkin plant survived the spring frost and you need more than one for plant fertilization in order to get the fruit (pumpkin). Somehow we still managed to get one pie pumpkin. I lost all of the pepper plants that I started from seed due to frost. Voles or deer gobbled up my broccoli, brussels sprouts, chard and kale. I definitely need higher fences next year. The Romas and cherry tomatoes I put into large pots, did not do so great. The plants did not get very big and I didn’t get as many tomatoes as I expected. I probably won’t use pots for tomatoes again. Sugar snap peas and carrots never sprouted and I gave up.
Gardening takes a lot of work! My dream is to someday have the time and space to grow all my own food. For now I pride myself on the little bit that I harvest and thank the farmers that provide us with most our our fresh produce. They are heroes!
